Firefox is the browser of choice for most designers and developers in part because of the vast selection of add ons that are available. While Chrome does not offer anywhere close to as many extensions (yet), there are still a number that can be very handy for designers and developers. In some cases they are not as robust as the Firefox versions (example, Firebug and Firebug Lite), but if you are using Chrome you may be interested to know about the extensions that are available. Additionally, Chrome comes with some developer tools built in.

In this post we’ll feature 17 of the most useful Chrome extensions for designers and developers. Hopefully in time the selection and quality of Chrome extensions will be able to rival those of Firefox.

Speed Tracer

Speed Tracer is a tool to help you identify and fix performance problems in your web applications. It visualizes metrics that are taken from low level instrumentation points inside of the browser and analyzes them as your application runs. Speed Tracer is available as a Chrome extension and works on all platforms where extensions are currently supported (Windows and Linux).

Firebug Lite

Firebug Lite is a tool for web developers, that allows you to edit, debug, and monitor CSS, HTML, and JavaScript live in any web page.

Pendule

Pendule displays linked and embedded style sheets of the current page in a new tab. It reloads the style sheets for the current page on the fly, so you don’t have to reload the whole page for each change, and also disables CSS for the current page.

Eye Dropper

Eye Dropper and Color Picker extension which allows you to pick color from any webpage or from advanced color picker.

Aviary Screen Capture

With Aviary Screen Capture you can take a screenshot of any webpage and edit it directly in your browser with Aviary.com applications. Plus convenient access to the Aviary website and tools.

PlainClothes

PlainClothes styles — or rather “unstyles” — the web. Just imagine: text is black, backgrounds are white, unread links are blue, visited links are purple, all links are underlined. Or any other colors you like. And all text is rendered in your default fonts (as defined in “Options” > “Under the Hood” > “Change font and language settings”). Everywhere. Automatically.

Chrome Sniffer

Chrome Sniffer will help web developers to inspect web framework / CMS and javascript libraries running on websites while browsing. An icon will appear on the address bar indicating the detected framework.

IE Tab

IE Tab will allow you to use Internet Explorer to display web pages in a Chrome tab. Some sites can only be displayed using IE, and with this extension you can now see those sites without leaving Chrome. Great for web developers who want to test the IE rendering engine, users who use sites with ActiveX controls, and users who want to use the explorer view for local files (i.e. file:// URLs).

Resolution Test

Resolution Test is an extension for developers to test web pages in different screen resolutions, with an option to define your own resolutions.

MeaureIt!

With MeasureIt! you can draw out a ruler that will help you get the pixel width and height of any elements on a webpage.

Validity

Validity can be used to quickly validate your HTML documents from the address bar. Just click the icon in the address bar to validate the current document without leaving the page. The number of validation errors can be seen in the tool tip.

Snippy

Snippy allows you to grab snippets of web pages and save them for future use. Snippy capture rich contents and preserves formatting, so you can capture paragraphs, images, links and more.

META SEO Inspector

META SEO Inspector can be useful to inspect the meta data found inside web pages, usually not visible while browsing.

LastPass

LastPass is a free online password manager and Form Filler that makes your web browsing easier and more secure.

Google Tasks

The Google Tasks extension allows you to access Google Tasks from any web page at any time. Great for just jotting something down or checking your agenda.

I’d like to recommend you my alternative to “Resolution Test”: that’s “Window Resizer”

Some of the features that (I like to think) makes it better than the other, is the ability to add your own customized resolution presets and the option to resize either the entire window or just the viewport.

Great list!! I love Chrome and have been using it more and more (as I am looking forward the implementation of the ChromeOS). But I find myself going back to FireFox for work as it has all the add-ons that I have come to depend on day-in/day-out. A decent-sized chunk of that is covered here – so maybe I’ll be using Chrome more often now.

Great collection of extensions. A lot of these look like they will be very useful for me, especially the SEO ones. I will definitely have to try them out and see how they compare to the Firefox extensions. Thanks for sharing.

Man I wish they made the full Firebug extension for Chrome. Chrome has replaced Firefox on my machine, except for instances when I need to use Firebug. It’s the only thing beyond browser testing that keeps me from being 100% Chrome.